Icon and Icon Fonts: New thread

When do icons become characters of text?
Is a character in an icon font that has a well defined meaning like the
search glass a character in text?
If icons images are used in a standard way to express language and have no
equivalent icon font value are they really text?
If an icon image is the same an icon font value and has a generally agreed
upon meaning, is it an image of text?

I think according to the WCAG 2.0 glossary the answer is yes, no, yes.
But the second is really generally accepted information conveyed by an
image that is not programmatically determined.

1.4.3 applies the first class. No question.
The last two situation should have a special fail case for 1.4.3.

Wayne